By Merrick Garland, Attorney General

Our society is shaped not only by the rights it declares but also by its willingness to protect and enforce those rights. Nowhere is this clearer than in the area of voting rights.

Fifty-six years ago Friday, the Voting Rights Act became law. At the signing ceremony, President Lyndon B. Johnson rightly called it “one of the most monumental laws in the entire history of American freedom.”

Prior attempts to protect voting rights informed his assessment. The 15th Amendment promised that no American citizen would be denied the right to vote on account of race. Yet for nearly a century following the amendment’s ratification, the right to vote remained illusory for far too many.

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By Steve Neavling

A Justice Department inspector general’s investigation was unable to identify who in the FBI leaked information to the media or Rudolph Giuliani prior to the 2016 presidential election. 

But according to the new 10-page report from Inspector General Michael Horowitz, more than 50 FBI officials were in contact with reporters who wrote about investigations before the election.

The impetus of the internal probe was the discovery that details of the FBI investigations into Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s campaign were leaked to the media. 

Horowitz noted that it was difficult to identify the leakers because he did not have subpoena power and that too many agents had contact with reporters. He noted there was “a cultural attitude at the FBI that was far too permissive of unauthorized media contacts in 2016.”

Giuliani previously claimed he had inside information about the Clinton investigation. But according to the report, Giuliani walked back his claims, saying he did not talk to active FBI agents and “had no foreknowledge” of then-FBI Director James Comey’s public revelation just before the election that the bureau had reopened the investigation into Clinton’s use of a personal email account. 

By Steve Neavling

Two members of Congress are calling on the Homeland Security director to address alarming allegations in a Michigan ACLU report that accused Border Patrol of “blatant racial profiling.”

The report, which is based on thousands of pages of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, says 85% of noncitizens apprehended by agents were from Latin America, even though more than 70% of those arrested in Michigan for entering the U.S. without authorization from Canada were Canadian citizens or originally from Europe. It also revealed that more than 96% of the people apprehended by Border Patrol agents were recorded as being “Black,” “Dark Brown,” “Dark,” Light Brown,” “Medium Brown,” “Medium,” or yellow.”

In a letter to Homeland Security Director Alejandro Mayorkas, U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Jamie Raskin, D-Md., accused Border Patrol agents of focusing more on harassing immigrant communities than enforcing the law. 

“Taken together, these findings suggest that CBP’s operations in Michigan are focused less on its lawful enforcement priorities than on harassing longtime residents of Michigan in a way that systematically and disproportionately target those of Latin American origin,” Tlaib and Raskin wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Director Alejandro Mayorkas.

Tlaib and Raskin want a meeting with Mayorkas to address the report’s findings. 

“We are deeply troubled by what appear to be discriminatory abuses of authority and misuse of taxpayer funds,” they wrote. “DHS must provide a full explanation of exactly how it is addressing the problems laid bare by the ACLU.”